Carr's dangerous game with race

"Obey the law of the land, or leave us," Bob Carr says. "I can't make it simpler." Perhaps the Premier is making it too simple. His comments about the recent shooting murders in Greenacre will strike a chord with many Australians. The disgust at such crimes undoubtedly reflects what decent Australians feel about guns, violence and criminal behaviour. But when Mr Carr speaks out, in the unsubtle way he has in this case, he crosses a dangerous line.

What he calls his simple message - "Obey the law in Australia or ship out of Australia" - is presented not as a problem of Australian criminal behaviour by Australians to be dealt with by the Australian community under its laws but as a threat to an implicitly superior Australian culture by something alien to it. "We're not going to see," he says, "step by step, our civilisation dragged back to medieval standards of revenge cycles. Simple as that." That is surely too sweeping. Australian civilisation, like any other, has never been and never will be free of the kind of criminal behaviour reflected in the Greenacre killings. The battle to eliminate crime and prevent all killings - including revenge killings, vendettas, gang wars or whatever they might be called - didn't begin last week, last month or last century.

The perpetrators of the most recent killings, it must be hoped, will be caught and brought to trial. If they are convicted - and, crucially, if they happen not to be Australian citizens - they might well face deportation. That is the law. But Mr Carr, in the way he put it, seemed to be saying that people who engage in suspected revenge killings of the sort seen in Greenacre lose their right to remain here. Yet, if they are Australian citizens that cannot be true.

Between the lines of Mr Carr's statement is the suggestion, surely picked up by all who heard him, that not only should people who engage in certain kinds of criminal behaviour "ship out of Australia" but that if they don't, they'll be helped on their way. For those who might legally be subject to deportation, such an observation is redundant. To suggest it might apply to others comes dangerously close to vigilantism.

Mr Carr named no ethnic group, but few would not have known whom he meant. The Premier knows the power of words and uses them with more telling effect than most politicians. In this case he must have known he was effectively stereotyping the Lebanese community in Australia as threatening to drag down Australian civilisation. It was an appeal to the lowest common denominator in the established Australian community. It can do no good, not least because the police, if they suspect those responsible for these killings come from a particular community, will need its fullest co-operation. And it can do much harm, by inflaming passions when they should be calmed and hardening prejudices when they should be broken down.

Sledging or banter, cricketers decide

Today is the first chance for the state's cricket fans to see their newly brushed heroes in person. When the Test team walks onto the SCG it will be with a determination to behave better. Presumably, this determination is different from that seen the previous times such promises have been made.

The cricketers' new self-defined code of conduct adds to those of the Cricket Australia and the International Cricket Council (ICC). The ICC code is strict. For example, it prescribes penalties for "showing dissent at an umpire's decision ...; using language that is obscene, offensive or insulting and/or the making of an obscene gesture; excessive appealing ...". Were this code enforced, few Australian players would go unscathed. Cricket Australia's milder code says players "must not show dissent from the umpire's decision" but says crude and abusive behaviour is only serious if it is repeated, or seen by others, or directed at another person and likely to give offence.

The cricketers' own code is as tough as marshmallow. It says players "do not condone or engage in sledging or any other conduct that constitutes personal abuse", but views "pressure, body language and banter ... as legitimate tactics" and that "we play our cricket hard but fair". Their captain, Steve Waugh, uses this phrase to defend actions most see as crude and insulting.

And this is the problem. What many find highly offensive, elite cricketers and Cricket Australia's chief executive, James Sutherland, see as normal. In Perth last week Sutherland said: "If sledging is personal abuse of an opposition player, why is it that no Australian player has been reported for such an offence in the past couple of years?"

Well, it's all a matter of definition. This is what Glenn McGrath said to West Indian batsman Ramnaresh Sarwan in May: "If you ever f---ing mention my wife again, I will f---ing rip your f---ing throat out." He was not reported, presumably because all involved - players, umpires, captains and the ICC's match officials - saw this as banter, as hard but fair, as anything but sledging.

Perhaps the Australian players will improve. As leopards age, their spots don't change, but the colours may soften a little. Far more likely, though, is that better behaviour, should it arrive, will come with the next generation of cricketers.